Saturday, 4 July 2009

Sketch Saturday: Red Skull

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's fright-mask Nazi has enjoyed a variety of ancestor aliases, including an American industrialist spy-master, an ideologically confused Soviet agitator, and an anti-Semitic bellhop. He'll always be Hitler's wet-work wunderkind to me though. Rather than opt for the almost simian blockhead the character often sports, I decided I liked the idea that the mask was the face: a flayed, prickling pain-box resting on fascist fever shoulders. Kept alive by Nazi occult science and seething hatred.